Show Me the Way

To Luke chapter 19, please. About halfway through the chapter, there's the familiar story of the triumphal entry. And let's pick it up around verse 34, where they get the colt for Jesus, the disciples that is, and pick up the colt, and they come to Jesus. And verse 35, They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and put Jesus on it. And as he went along, people spread their cloaks in the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. And as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it, and said, If you, even you, had only known this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you, and encircle you, and hem you in on every side. And they will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. And they will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, My house will be a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of robbers. Every day he was teaching at the temple, but the chief priests and the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him, yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. Well, I'm happy to report to you this morning. I do have my Bible with my notes. In case you didn't know this last week, for the first time in the 12 years of ministry, someone had taken my Bible home Saturday night with my sermon notes in it last week. So we had a great time scrambling, and an even better time when I saw the couple last night that had inadvertently picked it up. This is a final message from my contribution on this series of rejoicing, relating, and today reaching out. In a nutshell, this is what we're going to do all year long. If you get these three words, same with me, rejoicing, relating, reaching out. If you get these three words in your spirit, you'll be prepared to to really encounter everything that's going to be coming over the next months of this new year. But I want to begin today with a question for every one of you. What, if anything, has moved you to tears in terms of a need that you've encountered? What, if anything, has moved you to tears in your recent memory? Can you remember a time when you so identified with the plight of someone else that you cried real tears? Someone's thinking, yeah, the Pirates, they lost to Atlanta. Do you have something, how long has it been? I was going to tell you about the Christmas banquet in 1989 when 4,000 homeless, not homeless, but inner city people came to our Christmas banquet, and I remember watching them coming up the escalators and thinking, God, you know, how this is just such a drop in the bucket of meeting those needs. I was going to tell you about India a few years ago when I was in the city of Bombay and was taken to a little shanty town and ducked my head as I walked into this little place where six children were gathered around an open fire cooking what they called their dinner. And that wasn't all that uncommon. I'd seen that before, but what just flooded me with tears was when I stood up and turned around, there was a picture of Jesus over the doorway. These were Christian kids. But I suppose I could tell you about last night when Gary Beasley, by the way, was here, and I'm sorry I didn't make that clear enough to everyone. Gary came to just share a message with us. He's here ministering at Westridge this weekend, and he came last night, and at the end we had an invitation for those who wanted to commit their lives to the service of God, and particularly, the Holy Spirit led us to call for young people. And last night I found myself as I prayed over a little 13-year-old guy by the name of Mike who came up last night to say, I don't want my life to be wasted. I want something to happen with my life. And I was just reminded of how many young people I know. How about you? Wonderful young people, but they're just kind of groping and searching for what's really going to matter in life. Tremendous need and opportunity there. You see, I want you to capture here that Jesus is in the midst of the greatest celebration of his life. This is Palm Sunday. You didn't miss that, did you? This is the Hosanna. This is when people are celebrating and rejoicing. He's the king they're crying. I mean, this is the the brightest moment of his ministry. Now to catch this, look at your scripture. It doesn't say the next day. It doesn't say a week later. It says, verse 41, as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept. He went from rejoicing to weeping. The little word study on wept. How many times in the New Testament does the Bible say Jesus wept? Not a trick question, you know it. All right, when is the other time? When he confronted Lazarus. It's a different Greek word. There the word for cried or wept is the word for silent tears. Here it's the word for wail or moan out loud. Jesus broke down. Somehow there's an inescapable statement in this little sentence that Jesus Christ had a tremendous, and here's the the operative word for this morning, burden. Burden for the lost of a city. Lost people, broken families, shattered lives. Jesus had a burden to touch them and he cries out and said, if you even you had only known this day what would bring you peace. He saw the people looking for peace, searching for contentment, looking for satisfaction, wondering about purpose, but looking in all the wrong places. And church, I can't think of anything more needed in the church of this city and in this church in this city than a burden for the lost of our city. You see, without a burden all the resolutions we're trying to make to do better this year, they're just gonna fade away. Without a burden, can I tell you, you're too busy. Other things will preempt your commitments to touching the lost. Without a burden, you're gonna be too easily discouraged by the people who rebuff you with their shortness and with their vapid arguments. Without a burden, we're gonna give up. But having a burden is gonna make an enormous difference. See, burden has to do with being. Remember being a spiritual being. The Holy Spirit, the Bible says Acts 1.8, and you shall be, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be my witnesses. You will be my witnesses. It's gonna be who we are. It's gonna be the essence of our burden together. When I've seen a person with a burden, their life is different than someone who just, you know, made a commitment to do something. Who do you know that has a burden on their life? Well, I right away think of some of our missionaries. Oh, you want to get next to someone like David and Betsy Hunter. I mean, they have a burden for Turkey. You know, get next to Lisa Anderson. She has a burden for Central America. Get next to the Starkey's. They have a burden for China. Get next to Joe Belante, someone that we support through your tithes and offerings in the inner city. He has a burden for street kids. He goes around on the streets of Pittsburgh and talks to kids and gets them to join his weightlifting clubs so he can identify with them and then begins to share the gospel. Do you know someone around you today that has a burden? What's involved in that? How do I develop a burden? I don't want to be someone that just kind of, you know, floats along hoping that God will use me. I want to know that I'm called to do something and I want it to be a burden that I can't escape. But I wonder, when's the last time you've wept for something or someone? Let me share with you what I see Jesus teaching us here about this. The first thing to receive a burden is this. Number one, perceive the need. Look what it says. When Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, the beginning point is that you have to recognize that it can be hidden from your eyes. Look at the end of verse 42. But now it is hidden from your eyes. You don't see your problem. How many of you know someone who doesn't see their problem? I know a lot of people like that. They think that everything's kind of okay. They don't see their problem. With all due respect to our new president and his optimism about America, I disagree with him. We do not have the power in ourselves to heal America. The best programs won't even come close to stopping crime. And abuse. And violence. And greed. I believe our president is about to discover the depths of depravity of the human nature. And his best solution seems to lie somewhere along the process of simply increasing tolerance and eliminating absolutes. I don't think it's going to work. The real problem in America is a crisis of spirit and values. That's the problem. It's not a matter of just getting the right resources into the right places. We don't have the resources apart from God to heal America. And few people will acknowledge that need because it's no longer politically correct. Church, our first point of recapturing our mission as a reaching church, and I want to tell you something. Listen carefully, nine o'clock service. We have lost the thrust of our mission. We have not baptized anyone in four months. And that's serious. I don't think the Lord is pleased. If we're to recapture what I know God has put in us, and to begin to be the type of moving congregation that's out there, each one reaching one, we've got to first of all get in touch with the real needs of people. It's amazing how much we're in touch with everything else out there. I'm going to read the stock reports every day. No hands? Well, thank you. Let me broaden this a little bit. How many of you watch the weather channel every day? I've got this fixation with the weather channel. But I was real convicted. I read this scripture. It says, he said to the crowd, when you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say it's going to rain. And it does. You know, I see the weather. And when the south wind blows, you say it's going to be hot. And it is. You hypocrites, who? You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, the weather channel. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? I was really convicted. I do know an awful lot about it. You know, I just kind of watch what's going to happen next. And I wonder how many of us spend any time at all really getting in touch with the needs of people. Do you really know what's going on out there? A recent study by George Barnard reported as he went out and just talked to people, not Christian people, but unchurched people, to gain their perception of what the church was doing to meet needs. Here's what he found. Less than half of those surveyed, 46 percent, thought that the churches were responsive to the needs of families. Slightly fewer, 39 percent, thought that they were meeting the needs of senior citizens. 25 percent thought the churches were sensitive to the concerns of the poor teenagers and women over 35. For the majority of the groups asked about, and including ethnic minorities, young adults, singles, and non-Christians, fewer than 20 percent, one in five, of adults in general, think the churches are very sensitive. The general opinion, in other words, is that the church caters primarily to the needs of Christians. Now, should we say that the church isn't concerned about the needs of Christians? Of course we are. I would submit to you that everything we do around here has a bent toward meeting the needs of Christians. But dear ones, there's a dying, hurting, needing world out there. 37 percent of the population in the North Hills area is single. Recently, one of our members, on his own initiative, paid for some advertising in WPIT to say, singles, if you're looking for someplace to go, we have this little place, this little brown house where we're going to meet, just to hang out and be together. He's getting between 30 and 40 calls a day, just to come to a place where they can meet other singles outside of a bar and fellowship together. I talked to a couple recently who just moved 18 months ago to Pittsburgh. They told me, we have not met one person that wanted to reach out to us to form a friendship. We're thinking about moving back to the Midwest. 18 to 25 year olds, I don't know how many conversations I've had in the last two months with this age group who really have no idea where their life is going. They're trying to figure out a major for college or find a job, totally out of the context of knowing God's will for what their life is about. That's some of you in here, by the way. Routinely, in any given week, we have somewhere between three and five phone calls from families that are cracking up. Friends of many of you who call and say, can someone talk to us? I'm getting a divorce, I can't stand it anymore. That kind of a thing. Family values, lots of people in our neighborhoods realize the pressure on our teenagers and our youngsters and they're saying, help me know what to do as a parent so I don't lose my kids. And then there's the affluent, many of which live in these neighborhoods, also many of whom are consumed with alcoholism. Totally disillusioned about trying to achieve something that hasn't satisfied them. Empty on the inside, distant from their spouse. No one's speaking to them. What you and I know is all of these things are true and we haven't even talked about the fact that God has said in His Word that every person has a God-shaped vacuum, to use Augustine's words, saying, God, who's God? I want to know God. And what I perceive, dear ones, is that we tend to be limited by our history or by our perception of what we don't have or can't do of our available resources and we limit God on the inside. We limit Him. We're afraid of the time we might have to give. We're concerned that we won't have the right answers. We really don't know what to do, so we don't do anything. Think about how many times in the Gospels Jesus came to the disciples and said, wait a minute, you think this, but here's how it is. In Matthew 14, and there might even be in your notes, when the disciples had 5,000 men listening to Jesus preach and women and children, and it came time to feed them, what did they say to Jesus? Lord, send them away so they can get something to eat because they're hungry and they're going to die on the way home. And what did Jesus say to them? Remember the words? You give them something to eat. What did they do? They stopped, right? Come on, what can we do? And Jesus took their little bit. What a picture that is. He took their 5 loaves and their 2 fish, or as we'd say, 2 fishies, and fed all 5,000. Now that wasn't just some nice, that's a message that God can take your little bit and meet the needs of multitudes. That's that story. And I see it over and over again. You remember the time the disciples were walking with Jesus and he sat down at the well at Samaria and had a woman bring him a drink? Well, that was unheard of. And all the disciples were... He's talking to a woman, a Samaritan woman. And Jesus shattered all their images of what they were permitted to do because the Bible says that the whole town came out to hear what he had to say because he ministered. Well, how about Peter? In Acts chapter 9 or 10, right around there. You know, Peter's like this real spiritual Jew who knows Jesus now and he's there having this dream and this ugly creature laid in sheep comes down out of the heavens and he knows that it represents the Gentiles. And the Holy Spirit says, Rise up and eat. And Peter says what? No way. I'm not gonna eat anything unclean. There's no way. I'm not gonna let that pass through my lips. And three times the vision returns and God is saying to him, Peter, break out of your small mindedness. My heart through you is for far more than just the little group. Hello? That you think it's for. I have a heart that's much bigger than that. And I want to submit to you, God is here today to say, North Way Christian community, let's get beyond the limitations of our own understanding, of our own limited resources. Let's get beyond the thought that this is just all God wants to do. Let's get to where we believe that God would want to do something through you. Far beyond your expectation. If we'll allow him to do it. We should have, you know who our heroes should be? People like the bed carriers in Mark chapter two. Remember that story? They found someone with a need about, it was a paralytic man and they heard Jesus was in the town. So they got four of them together, picked up each end of the pallet and walked with this paralytic man. And they got to the house and the crowd was so great at the house, they couldn't get close. Now, what do you think the people in the crowds were saying as they kind of nudged their way near the front? What do you think they said to him? No way, you're not going to get in here, forget it. He's just going to have to wait. I love their spirit. What did they do? They said, well, you know, there is a way. We're going to figure this out. They climb up on the roof. Good thing it's not this roof, they come through. They climb up on the roof. They peel away the tiles. I mean, what a vivid picture. And they're lowering this guy down because they were determined to get to Jesus. I want to say that's the model I want you to have and I want to have. There were some way, somehow, I'm going to get that loved one to Jesus. Some way, somehow, that neighbor is going to come to Christ. I'm not going to be deterred. I'm not going to take no for an answer because I care about them. Thank you. I prayed this week about how I could best illustrate this. And I want to introduce you to, and this isn't really a homiletically correct place to have an illustration like this, but I think it's the right place. I want to introduce you to two women of our congregation, two moms who began to have a burden for their neighborhood. And I want you to hear what God did with a simple burden. Just as they brought their lives to the Lord and said, Lord, some way we want to be effective. And Judy Stadel and Artis can come on up real quickly. And let's push this back. Are we on here? Great. Good morning, Artis. Good morning. Go ahead and tell the folks what's happening. Okay. Well, my mom would just love you. I'm telling you the words that he said are the words that come out of her mouth constantly to me. And I was raised agnostic or atheist, and she became a Christian later in life. And just really tried to instill in us the burden for wherever you're at, whoever you're in contact with, you know, just, oh, you know, try to bring those people and let them see Jesus. And any neighborhood that I moved into, my mother would always say, okay, look around, you know, because you're there for a reason. I'm like, oh, mom, you know. She goes, no, get the burden for these people, you know. So I said, okay. So I would invite these ladies into lunch, you know, and we would get together and just awesome things would happen. And she would say, pray. And I'm telling you, there's going to be an opportunity for you to share with these ladies. And I was like, well, do I have to give them scriptures and shove it down their throat? And she goes, no, no, you're in that neighborhood for a reason. She goes, you're going to just, you know, just share that you're a Christian where you're at, and they're going to watch you. And wild things are going to happen. And that's what happened each time. And I moved here from Minnesota and to our neighborhood about two and a half years ago. And I started this birthday club with 10 ladies in our neighborhood. And it was just so neat what the Lord's doing. And we're at the point now where we hold hands and we pray. And I say, is there anybody here who has something that they want to pray about? And they look at each other. I do. You know, and we pray together. And oh, it is just wonderful. And I was telling my mom about it. And she says, you know, and a couple other ladies came up to me and said, can I be in your birthday club? And now we've got a club going on in our neighborhood. It's funny. And so I told my mom, I said, a couple more gals want to be in this birthday club. And she goes, you need to start a Bible study in that neighborhood. I said, oh, mom, come on. You know, she goes, I'm going to pray that the Lord brings somebody into that neighborhood that's as on fire for the Lord as you are. And I said, okay, mom, that's great, because she's going to do it, you know, not me. You know, she goes, okay. And when my mom prays, just, I mean, she really, there's so much, such power in prayer. I don't think we can, little, our little minds can comprehend it because things happen. And the Lord brought Judy Steidel into my neighborhood. We moved into the neighborhood in June. And when we moved in, we knew we had been praying for, my husband and I had been praying for two years to where we were supposed to be. And we came from the east part of Pittsburgh. And the Lord showed us that it was to be here. And when we drive past the church, the Lord would say, there's where you're going. So we really knew we were to be here. So when we moved into the neighborhood, we were ready to go. And we took the summer. And as the summer went by, we joined a pool and my kids were on the swim team. And we began to share with the women there. I began to share. People would ask me, you know, how'd you get here? And I said, the Lord brought us here. And you know, I have to say that we've lived in different places, but I have never seen such a fertile ground as in the North Hills. I mean, people, women said to me, could you tell me a little more? And pretty soon, I had shared with so many people in that pool, they would come by and say, Judy. They'd whisper so that no one would hear them because they didn't want their neighbors to know I was asking about the Lord. But I had begun to see, and artists as well, that God was just moving mightily in our neighborhood. People were so open to who God was in their lives. And they wanted to hear about it. We began to perceive that God was doing some mighty things there. So we started to pray. And we said, Lord, what are we supposed to do here? You know, because people were just constantly talking to us about the Lord. So I said, artists, I think it's a Bible study. And artists are like, oh, God. I knew it was coming. So I said, let's do it. And you know, I'll tell you, some people wait for this huge revelation from God. You know, go to Afghanistan. But God just said, go to Doris's house and make cookies and share the gospel. And he says things like that. And he said, we just felt in our hearts, let's just do a Bible study. And let's do it for non-Christian women. So we opened it up for the whole place. And we said, if we get five, we'll be happy. That's five women we can really go after. And so we began to call. And we said, listen, we want to do a Bible study. We're going to talk about husband and wife relationships. We're going to talk about how to raise your kids. We're going to talk about everything. And it's going to be on a biblical perspective. So we thought, well, we're going to just lay it on the line. So you know, we'll be real open and honest with them. And so people began to come. The first meeting we had was 15 women. And at Christmas, we had 25 women, people still calling and asking if they could come. And you know, I have to say that when we first started to pray for this, what Jay said about a burden and limiting, God, I once heard a preacher say that we can never dream bigger than God, that our wildest dreams are never wilder than God. And the Lord said, Judy, you think you start out with 15 or 25? He said, believe for the whole neighborhood. Hundreds are going to come. So we've been believing. And you know, when you start out with a small burden and you move out on what God says, and there's days when I go down there and pray for the women in the neighborhood, all these faces come before me. And I'll tell you what, I literally weep for the families that are hurting, the women that are saying, I have this money. I have all this and that. But I don't know what I'm doing. And God just brings their faces before me. And I just sit and cry for them, cry out for their souls and for what God's going to do there. And we know that we have a meeting tomorrow. And we know that people, these women are just going to continue to come. We're believing for hundreds and hundreds of women. And we're believing for our entire neighborhood that they're all going to get saved. Yeah, and I just want to touch one more thing. When my mom said start a Bible study, my neighborhood, the ladies there are so classy, aren't they? I mean, they dress so gorgeous. I'm like, Mom, these ladies are just too beautiful to be in a Bible study, you know? I mean, they wear makeup every day. They're not going to be open to hear. And she's like, yeah, you know, they are. And they are. They really are. It's just neat. Now, tell the folks where you went to seminary. Bible school? No, we're just like Susie Homemaker, you know? But God can do anything through anybody when you just say, God, just use me. Because people really want to hear it, you know? And if you just use that boldness from God and just say, yeah, I'm a Christian. I love God. And you need to hear it. And it helps to have a team, doesn't it? Yeah, we have another woman that works with us, too. And the three of us get together all the time and pray for the neighborhood. And I have to say that we've targeted out of that 25, we've targeted five women that are on the edge, right ready to accept the Lord. And we are now meeting one-on-one with each woman, the three of us, and when the three of us get together. We just shared with another woman this past week and shared for three hours the testimony of God. And she was just, you know what? You're going to be blessed. You know, that's why my mom says, get in on it. She always says that. I'm like, get in on what? She goes, get in on the blessing. You'll be so blessed. You know, it's neat. You're not very excited. OK. Thank you. Once you begin to have that burden, you perceive the needs, the second thing you got to do is to pray. I'll just touch this very quickly. You got to pray because you see, otherwise the plan that you're going to come up with will be something you're doing, not what the Lord's doing. And then when you get frustrated, that's when you start to lose momentum. I have a lot to say here. Time doesn't permit it. But notice that Jesus, as he went on in his journey, ended up in the temple. He said, my house will be called a house of prayer. I mean, he was radical about the fact that prayer was essential if they were to meet the loss of that city. We have, coming up here in Pittsburgh, a wonderful opportunity to focus our prayers forward to the next several months with Billy Graham coming June 2 through 6. And I don't have time today to fully develop this. I'll come back to it in a couple of weeks. But in your notes today, I've provided for you an opportunity to consider re-enlisting in your prayer platoons. Billy Graham has discerned as an organization that their crusades effectiveness is directly, not just theoretically, but directly related to the effectiveness of prayer that precedes it. When asked, when the coordinator, the staff coordinator of Billy Graham was asked, what can you think of any crusade that didn't succeed in the United States? And he said, well, there's a few that weren't very fruitful. And we've ascertained that it had to do with the fact that prayer never really got off the ground in those cities. And so what they do, believe it or not, what they do is they invest heavily in the prayer ministry prior to the crusade now. And I could tell you a lot about that. But what we're going to do is somewhat build on our strength of the prayer platoons and get in concert with what they call Operation Andrew. All I want to say today is, if you're willing to consider taking a step of uniting with some other believers in a prayer platoon, maybe it's the one that you were formerly in, or if you weren't in one, you can just mark on there, I'm interested in a new one, whatever. There's going to be two kinds of prayer platoons. A support prayer platoon, which is going to be based on the principle of gathering together in a small group of two or three, and then calling your neighbors or visiting in your office or talking to your fellow students and saying, is there something we can pray about for you? Basically encouraging them to share their need and then even to join you, almost like an outreach prayer group. More about that later. And then there's going to be a purely intercessory prayer platoon where you're going to be calling out to God. And if a non-believer walked in, they'd probably flip out. So you're going to want to say, this is going to be like three or four of us who are really, we've got our list of friends and we're praying for them day by day. And the prayer platoon commitment is just 30 minutes a week. It's not a big commitment, but I'm going to ask you, if you're willing to be considered as part of a prayer platoon, I'm asking the Lord to give us 200 prayer platoons over the next month. And our commitment only goes until the crusade. So it's not for the rest of your life, just until the crusade. If you're in a home group, then you want to visit with your leader and find out if that group is going to become a prayer platoon and so on. But folks, we've got to pray. We've just got to pray. Let me just touch the third point and then I'll be done. Once we do that, once we perceive the need, once we are effectively moving in prayer together, then the next thing we've got to do is to partner with God and his church. A person with a burden, a person that's perceiving the needs and prayed up, is a person that God is bound to use, as these gals have said so clearly. It's then that a partnership with God and what he's doing so that you can be in line with the Holy Spirit and his church is so important. What Judy and Artis didn't say, because I was taking the microphone back from them, was their heart's desire is to eventually see many of these women and their families included in the life of the church because they know that a Bible study is not enough. They need to be fitted into the life of the local church. And I want to say to us, there is a critical need that we understand that the local church isn't just an option for people. Folks, it's a lifeline. I mean, it is an anchor in stormy seas. And we need to come to the place here at North Way where we really believe that God is using us as a church to help meet the needs of people. Listen to this quote, effective churches all have this one outreach ingredient in common. People who were members or regular attenders consistently invited other people with whom they had built relationships to attend their church. This corresponds to national studies that say people are most likely to visit churches which have been recommended by someone they trust. It's the Philip and Nathaniel principle. Come and see. It isn't advertising. It's not newspapers. It's not TV. It's someone I trust invites me to church with them. Once they get there, now listen, then it becomes your responsibility to extend to them a measure of acceptance and welcome and love. I just wonder how many times we walk right by people and say, well, you know, I don't have time. Folks, we need to be open hearted and warm and embracing, not pressuring at all, but letting people know that if they visit here, they're welcome here. That we're glad they're here. That our family hasn't come to the point of using birth control. But we want to keep bringing people into our family. Keep opening our doors. Every meeting should be that way. Generations, junior high meetings, Sunday morning, Friday evening singles, whatever. This group of believers needs to be reaching out every time to tho